Jens Lekman

Come September, almost exactly five years since the release of Jens Lekman's last album, the magnificent Night Falls Over Kortedala, the Swedish singer-songwriter finally releases his follow-up LP, I Know What Love Isn't. The album finds the whimsical-yet-weary 31 year old recovering from the worst heartbreak of his life, Jens explains, which occurred a little while before a relationship he describes as his most perfect and honest yet, one where he and his "a-romantic" best friend almost entered into a sham marriage so that he could score citizenship.

So far, so Jens. But despite I Know What Love Isn't arriving after three full-length releases, Lekman pointedly calls it his "debut" album and considers it his most focused record yet. And he never even intended to write about heartbreak this time, but he gave into expounding on the state of his trampled ticker in order to offer comfort, specifically to the fans who have been contacting him through the Smalltalk page of his website. (Unsurprisingly, the main reason people write to Jens is to talk about feeling romantically woebegone.) As he says, this album is intended to be "a hand to hold in the dark."

"I didn't have a home in the world, so I wanted a home in a person.
I felt like I had found that, and then it was taken away from me."

Pitchfork: Talking about the new album in an interview last year, you said, "I didn't want to write about broken hearts [and] heavy stuff."

Jens Lekman: Did I say that?

Pitchfork: Yeah!

JL: Oh, OK! I mean, that was a big failure because the whole album is about broken hearts! I mean, it did feel like I was trying to steer away from that after the last album, but there was a break-up and then it felt inevitable. I couldn't really do anything about it.

Pitchfork: Would you say it was a particularly bad break-up?

JL: I don't want to go too much into my personal experience, but it was definitely the worst break-up of my life so far, and an important experience. It surprised me in some sense, because it wasn't a really long relationship. But it had come to that point where I was looking for something like a home-- I didn't have a home in the world, so I wanted a home in someone else, in a person. I felt like I had found that, and then it was taken away from me.

Pitchfork: Do you feel cynical towards love because of those bad experiences?

JL: No, I think the cynicism that you have when you've just gone through a break-up is a luxury that you allow yourself for a while. I'm not cynical about that anymore. It's just interesting to look at the fact that, after the break-up, I was thinking about going through with this sham marriage with my best friend, and realizing that me and her had a completely platonic relationship, and it was the best relationship I've ever had. So I was looking at what people think love is.

Pitchfork: How close to the sham marriage did you get?

JL: We were both really into it! I asked her to marry me, and she said yes. Or maybe she asked me, I can't remember actually! We both loved how exciting it felt at the same time.

Since the last album, I lived in a suitcase for a year, and then a relationship brought me to New York for about four months, then I lived in Melbourne. Then I moved back to Gothenburg because the immigrant laws are strict for both Australia and the U.S., and I would have to marry someone to get into those countries. But I wouldn't really be able to get involved in a sham marriage without being able to tell anyone about it. I make a living from storytelling-- if you're a public person and you sing songs about getting married to get a visa, and you are actually doing that, you're gonna end up in trouble.

Pitchfork: What have the biggest changes been for you over the past five years?

JL: With the last album, Night Falls Over Kortedala, I created a big rainbow of different colors on my little palette. But, for this album, I only chose a few of those colors, so it's a little bit more held back. Musically, I haven't really changed or evolved in any way; it's more like taking things off from the painting and choosing colors more distinctly.

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Pitchfork: Does the new album feel more focused around one subject?

JL: It's definitely more focused. It's my debut album, I would say. The other albums had this little inscription inside of them saying, like, "a collection of recordings, 2000-2004," but this is the first one where I'm gonna skip that because it's really an album to me. That's something I'm proud of. At the same time, I know I said in the beginning that I would never make an album, and that I hated albums, but the way I put the same song ["Every Little Hair Knows Your Name"] as the first song and the last song, it feels like a section in a bookshelf, with two bookends on the sides.

Pitchfork: For Kortedala, you let friends pick the tracklisting from a group of songs. Did you do that this time around?

JL: No, no. I got some advice from one friend, but generally I was quite clear with what the album was going to be like.

"The song 'The World Moves On' basically started with the image of me lying on the floor hugging a bag of frozen peas to cool down."

Pitchfork: The album has a few moody, luxuriant sax and flute solos. Were you pushing that smooth sound?

JL: The one thing I planned from the beginning that the album seemed to agree with me on was that I wanted it to be aerodynamic. You know how in the early 90s, a lot of the songs were very focused on the verses being very quiet, and the choruses being super loud, like Nirvana? I was looking for the opposite of that, where you hardly notice where the chorus starts; it's just like an airplane taking off from a runway, smooth, and all of a sudden you're in the air.

Pitchfork: You said that the album "seemed to agree with you"-- do you have a give-and-take relationship with the music you're making?

JL: Yes, definitely. It's not much that you can control, in a way. It's a negotiation, where I tell the music what I want, and the music tells me what it wants, and then we end up somewhere else. Joan Didion said, "I write to find out what I'm thinking," and that goes for the music too. I have to write to see where it takes me.

Pitchfork: Are there particular points on the record where the music led you?

JL: "The World Moves On" basically just started with the image of me lying on the floor hugging a bag of frozen peas to cool down. I really liked that image, and then I started thinking, "What time is this, where was I?" And all these images came flooding in: the Black Saturday bushfires, my birthday, sitting in the park with the possums, getting beat up, and so on. I had no idea where these pictures were taking me, but in the end, they wrapped up so nicely and there was an actual story there!

After listening to that song, a friend of mine said, "There's a couple of verses in the middle that seem to be about nothing, maybe you should remove them." And I said, "No, that is the exact essence of this song." It's about the aimlessness that follows a break-up.

Pitchfork: Are you still sampling at all on this record?

JL: I used the samples a lot more economically in the same sense that I used other instruments less, too. I just wanted to keep that thing down. But the saxophone in "She Just Don't Want to Be With You Any More" is probably the longest sample I've ever used. It's from a band Paninari and the song was called "Sunny Days". It's a quite rare song-- but we were able to track them down, and they were so kind to let me sample that saxophone solo.

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Pitchfork: Which other records were touchstones for you in terms of that aerodynamic feel?

JL: Pet Shop Boys' Behaviour, which is one of my favorite records of all time. "Being Boring", for example-- the only thing that separates the chorus from the verses is like half a key, but it works so well. It just drifts into the chorus, and you hardly notice it.

"I wanted the album to be aerodynamic, like an airplane taking off from a runway-- all of a sudden you're in the air."

Pitchfork: Do you listen to very much modern music?

JL: I'm checking my playlists-- they're all full of old, weird stuff, and a lot of disco. I do a lot of DJing, that's sort of how I made a living between the last record and this record. That's how you make money, by the way, in the music business. There's no production costs! Anyway, I love a lot of old disco because it's aerodynamic, smooth, and very seductive. Every time I go out dancing these days, there's always music playing that's like, "You have to dance right now, or I'm going to beat the shit out of you!"

JL: Yeah! When I DJ, I try to think of the opposite of that-- more like, "It's all right if you don't want to dance, but just try to resist this!"

There were a few songs that didn't make the record because
they were just too boring-- they were the kind of songs
that men with guitars write! I hate that kind of song.

Pitchfork: The new song "Become Someone Else's" doesn't seem to be about your heartbreak-- it's about dudes falling in love with your friend Jennifer all the time. What other perspectives are you taking on the subject?

JL: I started from a very typical broken-hearted perspective: "Oh hey, I'm so lonely and blue." But after a while I found it more interesting to look from the side of the one who has to bear the burden of breaking someone's heart.

Pitchfork: Did you write much that didn't make it on to the record because it was too sad or self-pitying?

JL: There were a few songs that didn't make the record because they were too personal, but not because I was ashamed of putting them out. They were just too boring, you know? They were the kind of songs that men with guitars write! I hate that kind of song. There was actually one song that I recorded with Tracey Thorn that was quite sad, and quite personal, so I decided to not release it. I want it just for myself. Having that recording of Tracey singing the song for me is very comforting and special. I'm not gonna share that with the world.

Pitchfork: Do you have any moral line about including people's names, or the level of detail that you put into a song? Has anyone ever been annoyed by it?

JL: Never. These days I'm much more careful-- I always check with my friends if it's OK to have their name in there, and there are a few examples on the new record where I changed the names. And that's important-- family and friends always need to be bigger than your music career, and in that sense, your music will be bigger because you respect your family and your friends more.

Pitchfork: What do you hope people take away from this album?

JL: I just want people to get some kind of comfort from it. Especially the people who have gone through some kind of break-up. When I went through the break-up, I really looked for some kind of music, or art or literature that could say, "I've been in the same situation." I couldn't find anything at the moment, and that made me really sad.

Pitchfork: There was really nothing?

JL: It's strange, right? Ninety-nine percent of all songs are written about this! But when it happens to you, it's just so specific that you feel like you can't really relate to anything at that moment. Then, when you come out of it and start looking for someone who's had a similar experience, it's important that there's something there.

One of the most important things I learned is that every time this happens to you, you're looking for some sort of closure and waiting for things to become good again, but that's a modern invention of some kind. It's something you actually have to live with, in a way. On the new album, I sing, "You don't get over a broken heart/ You just learn to carry it gracefully." That's the line that I want to leave with this record.